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the words were said but his eight eyes always looked at her reproachfully.

Thandiwe had learnt the words by eavesdropping on a tech when she came to fix Mr Fact’s head after it had got caught in the bedroom door. It had been amazing how many times Thandiwe had had to slam the door on poor Mr Fact’s head before something had broken. She knew that there were other words, key phrases that would allow her to access the deeper structures of the robot’s brain, but as yet she hadn’t figured out a plan to get them.

Still, the words she had were enough to override some of the security protocols, especially if she reached in and flipped the microswitch just behind the third eye stalk. A simscreen unfolded out of the open top of Mr Fact’s skull and displayed a menu made up of half a dozen mikons. As usual the most active mikon was the one that terminated Mr Fact’s diagnostic mode, sealed up his head and returned him to normal activity. A tiny representation of a spider, it would scuttle around the screen, sometimes even knocking the other mikons out of the way in an attempt to get under Thandiwe’s fingertip. Mr Fact didn’t like having his head open.

Thandiwe was wise to his tricks though, and feinting with her right hand she touched the sensor mikon with her left index finger. A couple of sub-menus later and she had Mr Fact set up as an ad hoc surveillance device.

‘Who shall we spy on today?’ said Thandiwe. Mr Fiction said nothing but brushed his ears and giggled. Through Mr Fact she had access to every securicam in Kibero, allowing her to look practically anywhere, including all the tiptop secret places that Mama didn’t think she knew about.

Actually, she found the secret places pretty boring. Most of them looked like small offices full of ordinary people talking to each other. Many of them used long incomprehensible words and acronyms that Thandiwe could have asked Mr Fact to translate –

if she hadn’t had to deactivate him to spy in the first place. She quickly learnt that people were far more interesting than places.

And her family the most interesting of all.

‘I want to see what Mama is doing,’ she told the screen.

102

The sim phased in a view of her mama’s office. She was looking through one of the cameras up on the wall, she knew.

She tried to imagine she was a bot, crouching up on the wall, listening while her mother talked to a boring-looking man on a screen.

‘We’ve managed to trace her at last,’ he said. ‘Good news, Lady Forrester. We’re now certain she left Fury within two hours of the attack on ICC.’

‘Do you know where she went?’

‘I’m afraid not, My Lady, but we’re working on it. Our best lead is a missing Imperial shuttle, though it had an ISN crew.’

‘Keep me informed,’ said Mama. ‘The moment you know anything, however tenuous, tell me right away.’

‘As always, My Lady.’ The boring-looking man gave a little bow. Mama switched off the screen.

Mama looked at a screen on her desk, and then glanced up at Thandiwe – at the securicam she was looking through.

‘You’re a very naughty child,’ she said, smiling. ‘Put Mr Fact back together at once.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ said Thandiwe, although she wasn’t sure if her mother could hear her.

103

3

Cassandra

17 January 2982

‘Unlimited rice pudding,’ said the Doctor.

Iaomnet bent down and checked the medical indicators on the arm of the Doctor’s HE suit. The respiration bar was still green, but the cardiac monitor kept blinking from red to green and back again.

She stared at him through the faceplate. His eyes were open, one looking to the left, the other rolled so far up that she could hardly see the iris. She didn’t think it was a good sign. A good suit would have had proper diagnostic software, but these suits were basic and quite old, a fact that was beginning to seriously worry her.

‘Doctor, can you hear me?’

‘“Boney,” I said, “an army marches on its stomach.”’

Reaching down, Iaomnet once again got a grip on the Doctor’s shoulder straps and started dragging